Dumping Billy [Paperback]

Olivia Goldsmith (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio (1980)
• ASIN: B000N63NW8
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,808,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Who Really Wrote this Novel?, June 6, 2004

By 

rcarey22 (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

I have read and thoroughly enjoyed the following novels by Olivia
Goldsmith:

The First Wives Club
Flavor of the Month
The Bestseller
Fashionably Late
Marrying Mom
Switcheroo
Young Wives
Bad Boys (although a lot of you disliked it, I actually enjoyed it)
Pen Pals

and have concluded, in my opinion, based on Ms. Goldsmith's untimely death, Dumping Bill was not Olivia Goldsmith's finished product. The plot may have been Olivia's but this story does not fit the in depth characterizations of her previous works.

Although I would not recommend passing on "Dumping Billy", as I found it interesting that a lot of us still mistake good looks with stupidity, cockiness or something worse. There are times when you have to look under the surface of an individual or a situation to perhaps find something you might have otherwised missed, like a good person who assumes an undeserved title without actually knowing it exists. The lesson I learned here was "you can't judge a good book by its cover".

Just beware this novel does not compare to the wonderful novels Olivia Goldsmith has defined throughout the years and you will come away asking the same question I did "Who Really Wrote this Novel"?

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars One of Goldsmith's weakest....., May 27, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

I have read all of Olivia Goldsmith's books, and I found this one to be among the worst. It seems like she wrote it in a matter of days- if she wrote it at all! It's silly, predictable, and the characters aren't much fun at all. They lack the depth and lovable flaws that attract us to her characters in most of her books. And while novels aren't supposed to be realistic, this one is so far-fetched it is irritating. "Bad Boy" was unlike many of her books because it did not have a large ensemble cast like "Billy," but at least that was funny and a decent read. This seems like it was written to appeal to teen girls.

Missing from this book are Goldsmith's sharp wit, great character development and fun plot twists. It's a good thing that this author will be remembered for her works like "The First Wives' Club" and "Flavor of the Month" and not for poor efforts such as this. If you're new to Olivia, leave this one on the shelf and pick up ANY of the others she wrote.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Please do not purchase this book!, July 16, 2004

By 

J. Guthrie (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dumping Billy (Hardcover)

Dumping Billy is the last book by Olivia Goldsmith. I doubt it represents how she would have liked to be remembered.

Kate has a serious superiority complex-
Her old friends from Brooklyn just do not get her anymore, now that she is a "Doctor" (school psych.) in Manhattan.
Of one friend: "Bina definitely had an irony deficiency." To another: "You've had a haircut? Nope, just had my ears lowered." Those New Yorkers and their witty repartee! Who could expect the poor folks in Brooklyn to keep up with snappy patter like that?

Kate must be referred to as the protagonist, as she is certainly the central character, but a long way from a heroine. (Except, perhaps, her own.) She is elitist, smug, and insufferable:
"Her apartment was in Chelsea, but Kate could pass for a downtown hipster."
"she was grateful for all she herself had learned about style from Brice, college, Manhattan boutiques and her current New York friends."
"But now that she had a circle of intellectual, cosmopolitan pals, she could give up the frustration over Bina's provincial interests and conversation and simply love her good heart."

I don't know about you, but I HATE this woman!

I kept waiting for Kate to come to the realization that she was narrow minded and small- I thought the point of the book must be her transformation. Alas, no. Although she doesn't seem bright enough to have completed the SAT (let alone a doctorate) and she is a wretched specimen of a human being, she is rewarded. I expect this from life, but pop novels usually follow more logical standards of good and evil.

The sophomoric dialogue is peppered with witty retorts like "Uh, duh!" and other lines I'm loathe to repeat, but in the interest of saving others the afternoon of pain I just experienced, I'll elaborate:
Kate leaves her (homosexual) friends:
'Say goodnight, Gracie.' 'Goodnight, Gracie,' Elliot and Brice chorused."
(Gay men are so clever.)

Kate refers to her Brooklyn girlfriends as her crew and her posse. Do thirty-one year old professional women in Manhattan do this?

"If she but knew it, she easily looked the most elegant woman in the room." (Oh god. I felt like I was reading a Babysitters Club book.) And is the line a joke? Every page previous to this seemed to exist only to reinforce how wonderful Kate thinks she is!

Billy says: "And I can date anyone I want!"
Our protagonist responds: "Not anyone. You can't date me! You're just a Mick who never even got out of Brooklyn. The trick with you is you are slightly better looking on the outside than you are on the inside, and the inner and the outer you are in constant conflict. That's why you don't know you're a loser."
This is the conversation of a Psychologist?

Again with Billy, Kate (the Doctor) tells him that he has a repetition compulsion. He references the DSM IV, and mentions the fact that Freud isn't terribly popular these days, then he says "And I don't have a petition.. whatever."
It certainly seems logical to ME that a man who quotes Freud and the DSM IV would have problems with a big word like repetition.

As others have suggested, I doubt this book was written by Goldsmith. Her books weren't literature, but they were well crafted and amusing.
This book was probably written after Goldsmith's death, (maybe based on an idea she was working on) by a white professional heterosexual male, most likely in his twenties.

A terrible waste of trees...